La Giralda

This guide to La Giralda in Seville puts you on the scaffold with the sculptor Bartolome Morel in August 1568, hoisting a hollow bronze woman ninety meters above the rooftops onto an iron pivot he was not sure would hold. It follows the painter Luis de Vargas, whose sketch turned a classical goddess into a Christian Faith Triumphant, and the centuries-older Almohad minaret she was meant to crown. Look up and you can still see the figure Morel hung that day, turning above stonework far older than her own bronze.